The volume Oltre l’adattamento? Narrazioni espanse: intermedialità, transmedialità, virtualità [Beyond Adaptation? Expanded Narratives: Intermediality, Transmediality, Virtuality] (il Mulino, 2020), edited by Massimo Fusillo, Mirko Lino, Lucia Faienza and Lorenzo Marchese, has just been published. Inside you can read my essay Marchio di serie. L’authorship contesa nell’ecosistema narrativo di Gomorra [Trademark of Series: Contested Authorship in the Narrative Ecosystem of Gomorrah]. The book also contains essays by Gino Frezza, Mirko Lino, Gianluigi Rossini, Emanuela Piga Bruni, Federico Zecca, Giancarlo Grossi, Beatrice Seligardi, Emiliano Morreale, Anna Chiara Corradino, Enrico Fantini, Lorenzo Marchese, and Lucia Faienza.
The visions of the future that TV series give us the opportunity to reflect on our present. Even more so if the future narrated is imminent and the thin line between truth and post-truth becomes difficult to draw. To talk about this topic, we have chosen Mario Tirino, a PhD in Communication Sciences who deals with the sociology of digital and audiovisual cultures, the mediology of literature and media theory. Together with Antonio Tramontana he edited I riflessi di Black Mirror. Glossario su immaginari, culture e media della società digitale [The reflections of Black Mirror. Glossary on imaginaries, cultures and media of digital society] and this is where we start our chat. Black Mirror, so discussed and almost improperly defined dystopic, insists on our link with technologies, disturbing feelings such as paranoia, the collapse of social imaginary, the post-human condition (and therefore identity crisis). More than a technophobic series, it is a series about technophobia, but not only that. Another series that has interested Mario’s studies is The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopic series of literary roots, focused on feminist themes that shake us. “TV series constitute a global language, a set of worlds that tells us about the present, different perspectives, questions about our being in society,” says Mario. Depending on the time available to us – less and less – the series offer us windows on the world, political reflections and keep us company with characters who become like friends.
Mario Tirino tells us about one of the most celebrated and significant series of recent years: the effectiveness of dystopian and paranoid imaginary in contemporary culture starting from Black Mirror.
MARIO TIRINO 